__
I wish the Tank McNamara strips were better archived on-line (www.gocomics.com only goes back to 1998) because over the years Millar & Hinds have done better real-world commentary than at least 67% of our avowedly “political” cartoonists.
Archives for November 2010
Pure self-indulgent wankery
Commenter MikeBoyScout writes:
I’m pretty sure all the Very Serious People in 1860 knew we’d always need and have slaves, and that racism was based upon fact.
I just went to an exhibition about Mark Twain yesterday and was struck by how much he sounded like a shrill modern leftie. He accepted evolution as established science, made fun of the idea of the Noah’s ark, wrote with bitter irony about the treatment of indigenous peoples in Australia (a lot of the exhibition was about his writing about his travels to Australia). The tone he took and some of the things he said would be eerily familiar to residents of the contemporary left blogosphere. (I’m sure he wrote all kinds of crazy, racist backwards stuff too, I’m not saying he was a saint.)
I realize this is an unabashedly wankerish, unanswerable question, but is public discourse now at all different from what it was back then? Or are things, at root, pretty much exactly the same?
The way it was
I’m going to be following this (via):
One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America’s most perilous period — using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.
He could throw that speedball by ya
I’ve always thought that Chris Matthews’ gushing about W’s ability to throw a baseball was probably one of the low points in our nation’s history:
There are some things you can’t fake. Either you can throw a strike from sixty feet or you can’t. Either you can rise to the occasion on the mound at Yankee Stadium with 56,000 people watching or you can’t. On Tuesday night, George W. Bush hit the strike zone in the House that Ruth Built…. This is about knowing what to do at the moment you have to do it–and then doing it. It’s about that ‘grace under pressure’ that Hemingway gave as his very definition of courage.
Bush threw another baseball over the plate last night and winger are excited. Steve Benen and Scott Lemieux have collected some of the best reactions:
One prominent conservative wrote about the former president throwing a baseball, “What a moment! … What a wonderful moment.” Another called the joint appearance on the field, “What a moving study in dignity and class. What a great example.” Another writer on the same site wrote, “God, I miss the man. I disagreed with him on a number of issues … but no one ever doubted where his loyalties lay or what country he thought he was President of…. It’s good to see that he still throws a baseball like a man, which is how he governed.”
Another wrote, “Miss them yet, America? What a moment in Texas. Father, son and baseball — it does not get any more American than that…. Remember Barack Hussein Obama’s pathetic first pitches? Who could forget the lameness.”
Mutatis mutandis — with basketball, motorcycles, or moose-hunting substituted for baseball — we will see the same bullshit trotted out in the 2012 election.
And, yes, wingers still have a crush on George W. Bush.
Update. His Satanic Majesty — i.e., John — requested that I insert a picture of Kenny Powers into this post.
Open Thread
Rather than continue to be emo and/or obnoxious, I’m just checking out for a few days. WVU lost. Steelers lost. Tomorrow will be a bloodbath. Thank goodness I will be traveling tomorrow and miss all the coverage. So, this is John Cole checking out at least until tomorrow night, at which point I hope to be somewhat sedated.
And don’t forget to order your 2011 Pet Calendar by clicking to the right…
Restoring sanity one rally at a time
A few thoughts on the Rally. First, here’s an image of the rally compared to Beck’s rally earlier this year via airphotoslive.com:
I know the point of the rally was not to compare or compete or whatever, but still… I don’t know if this points to something fundamentally flawed in the analysis of the enthusiasm gap, or if it just means that Stewart/Colbert are more popular than Glenn Beck. All I know is that the rally looks like it was a lot of fun.
Jack Gillis was there and he noted that there were fundamental similarities between the Beck and Stewart rallies as well:
It was important to both crowds to know that we weren’t alone in drowning in bleakness. We were together drowning in bleakness.
That sounds about right.
I thought Jon Stewart’s speech was great. I also think that there’s something of a misnomer in the title of the rally itself – which was sort of the point: Americans really haven’t gone insane. Sanity has not really been misplaced the last two years. A lot of optimism has died, but the vast majority of craziness – as Stewart points out – takes place in D.C. and on cable TV. The anger and insanity do exist, but “Most Americans don’t live their lives solely as Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives”. For better or worse, most people don’t obsess over this stuff.
Indeed, for most Americans who don’t obsessively watch cable TV or read political blogs, the terms ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ are rarely even spoken or thought about all that much. Plenty of Americans don’t even know who Glenn Beck is, or the first thing about actual policy decisions, or who to blame for the bad ones – which might be why the GOP is still poised, with one day left before the polls open, to make sizeable gains in the House.
Either way, like any good fiction, things are likely to get worse before they get better. The signs at the Sanity rally were funnier than the signs at the Beck rally, but one wonders if the value of irony will be quite as useful at the polls as passion and fear.
An Update on the Ohio Governor’s Race
A week ago, Quinnipiac had the Ohio Governor’s race at 49% to 43% Kasich, and I don’t think anything of note has happened since then, so take this information as reliable, or don’t.
The Ohio Governor’s race is a dead heat with Republican John Kasich getting 47 percent of likely voters to 46 percent for Democratic incumbent Gov. Ted Strickland, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
We’ll be phone banking here this afternoon, as planned, polls or no polls.
I will say this. National media calling this race over in August was yet another obstacle we had to overcome, locally. People don’t vote or volunteer when they’re told repeatedly that the race is over, so thanks for that, professional punditry.
If national political professionals are going to jump into governor’s races, I have a suggestion. They should acknowledge that state races are often volatile, and the numbers move a lot. Once they’re in, and pontificating on state races, they really have a duty to follow those changes daily, and update. If they don’t, they’re helping to decide the outcome. Either do the work properly or don’t weigh in.
That Kasich was a member of that same national media for the nine years that he was on the Fox News payroll is barely mentioned, which is inexplicable to me. He’s a step-brother at their sister network, Fox News. Maybe he’s the daddy. I’m not clear on these familial relationships, but I think it’s relevant and important that we’re potentially hiring a FOX News host-reporter-whatever as Governor of our state, and I don’t know why it wasn’t raised.
In Ohio, former Fox News host and contributor John Kasich is running for governor after spending nine years on Fox News, which paid him $265,000 in 2008. Despite his announced intention, Kasich continued to appear on-air as a Fox News contributor and host. Between March 28, 2008, and June 1, 2009, Kasich was a regular fixture on Fox News’ primetime programming, especially as a guest-host for cable’s top rated news show, The O’Reilly Factor. According to a Nexis search, Kasich guest-hosted or appeared as a guest on Fox News at least 123 times. Indeed, the day after the March 2008 Dispatch article, Kasich guest-hosted for O’Reilly.
During those appearances, Kasich regularly spoke about his own background and accomplishments, and the home of his potential voters, Ohio.
Hannity repeatedly referred to Kasich as “governor” and “soon-to-be governor,” and reportedly held a pricey fundraiser for him last October. Kasich received two $10,000 contributions from Fox-parent News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch and his wife, while News Corp. gave $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, which helps elect candidates like Kasich.
On The O’Reilly Factor, while Kasich made a fundraising appeal, Fox News put the URL for Kasich’s website onscreen. Hannity, meanwhile, told Kasich on July 8, 2009: “You do me a favor. Go get elected governor, although why you would ever want that job, you’re out of your mind, but good luck. And I’m supporting you in the effort.”
Anyway, if you’re in Ohio, email this poll to your list, and ask them to vote.